


all the genuine frankness of her character

by Elizabeth (anghraine)



Category: Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: Aunt-Nephew Relationship, Aunt-Niece Relationship, Canon Compliant, Family Fluff, Gen, One Shot, Post-Canon, Prompt Fic, Reconciliation, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-23 22:48:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7482939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anghraine/pseuds/Elizabeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Georgiana made her debut in London without a word exchanged between them; though Lady Catherine heard no ill of it, she was sure it would have proceeded more successfully and efficiently with the benefit of her advice. For Georgiana’s sake, she might even have gone to London herself. Why should she permit Elizabeth Bennet to estrange her from Anne’s only children? It felt less like victory, however bitter, than simply defeat. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the genuine frankness of her character

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heckofabecca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heckofabecca/gifts).



For over half a year, Lady Catherine heard nothing from her nephew. She heard nothing from her niece, either.—Her niece Georgiana, the only one whom she counted; she did not consider the creature who had ensnared Darcy as a true niece, nor the vapid girls Sir Lewis’ brothers and sisters had spawned. Georgiana, it transpired (Lady Catherine had it from her brother Ravenshaw) did not feel she could properly correspond with anyone estranged from Darcy. Rochford and Fitzwilliam, of course, wrote very much as they had ever done, but she had never found them very satisfying. Fitzwilliam was too inattentive by half, and Rochford a mouse of a man who, in all probability, had failed to find a wife and father children because he lacked the nerve to start the merest acquaintance with any body. Several times Lady Catherine decided that he would marry Georgiana, whom he already knew and whose fortune should then return to the family, but Darcy would never hear of it.

Lady Catherine was not a woman to bear contradiction. Yet her sister had always known her own mind, whereas her brother-in-law had been a pusillanimous sort of man, entirely unequal to Anne’s spirits. It pleased her to see so much of the Fitzwilliam firmness of mind in Anne’s son, all the more as he alone of the Fitzwilliam grandchildren seemed to have inherited it. Thus she had long accepted a certain willful abruptness in her nephew that she would not have tolerated in anyone else.

Her tolerance was not limitless; Darcy’s marriage to a girl of insignificant family, low connections, and no fortune worth speaking of, stretched far beyond what Lady Catherine could bear. She naturally informed him of her disapprobation, before and after his engagement, and in return for years of kindness and indulgence—over-indulgence, she thought now—her own sister’s son cut her off. All for that insolent girl!

As a further insult to her pride, her brother, though scarcely more pleased, refused to join her in completely ostracizing them. _At my age I see little purpose in casting off my relations. The marriage is imprudent but no worse; you talk as if he had married his maid. Mrs Darcy may not be what any of us hoped for him, but she is respectable enough, and from all I hear well-bred and agreeable. At this juncture, we can do nothing but make the best of it._

Lady Catherine did not dignify this with an answer. She even considered warning her friends and acquaintances in London, when the Darcys came for the opening of Parliament (Darcy) and the Season (Georgiana and Mrs Darcy). However, Ravenshaw offered some compelling arguments about airing family troubles to their inferiors, and in any case, she had never met many of those fashionable in town these days.

She would not have admitted it, but as early as January, she was softening. Anne did not sink into melancholy; her acquaintances seemed scarcely to know of the Wickhams’ existence; and she had never trusted the accounts she received from her Fitzwilliam nephews as much as Darcy and Georgiana’s satisfyingly long and detailed ones. Georgiana made her début in London without a word exchanged between them; though Lady Catherine heard no ill of it, she was sure it would have proceeded more successfully and efficiently with the benefit of her advice. For Georgiana’s sake, she might even have gone to London herself. Why _should_ she permit Elizabeth Bennet to estrange her from Anne’s only children? It felt less like victory, however bitter, than simply defeat.

Nevertheless, her sense of what was due to her could not allow her to relent. She was Fitzwilliam Darcy’s aunt, his elder, and with Ravenshaw, his nearest relation after Georgiana. She would not lower herself to seek a reconciliation. On this point, she expressed herself with some bitterness to her brother.

By chance or otherwise, a month later Mr Darcy wrote to Lady Catherine. (It was not chance. Lord Ravenshaw had been favourably impressed by Mrs Darcy in London, and more favourably impressed by her ability to turn Darcy’s implacable reserve and conviction to advantage.)

Lady Catherine received it with something very like relief. It was very short for Darcy, cold, proud—but if she understood anything, it was Fitzwilliam pride. Feeling herself on more comfortable ground, she replied just as coolly and nearly as briefly. Afterwards, as she told Lord Ravenshaw (with triumph that nearly bled off the ink), Darcy _and_ Georgiana wrote to her. Elizabeth Darcy had enough sense, it seemed, to refrain from imposing herself in this family affair; Lady Catherine heard nothing from her.

(Darcy would have laughed out loud had he heard this. He only wrote at all after several weeks of persuasion from his wife.)

The exchange of letters continued, each longer and warmer than the one preceding it. Darcy’s and Georgiana’s address shifted from _Darcy House_ to _Pemberley House_ ; and Lady Catherine began to talk, at home, of a desire to see what changes must have been inflicted on the place that should have been her Anne’s. She did not dream of lowering herself so far as to ask for an invitation, but by August one arrived.

She did not quite consider it an invitation. Darcy merely mentioned, in passing, that she might come if she liked. It was Georgiana who eagerly pressed her to visit, and promised that they would do all in their power to make her comfortable. It was Georgiana, too, who reminded her that Elizabeth was expecting a child, but none of them knew anything about such matter. _Fitzwilliam worries, as Elizabeth is so slight, and all her family at such a great distance._

(Elizabeth admiringly told Georgiana that the letter was a masterpiece.)

Lady Catherine wavered, an emotion which she found very disagreeable. In her heart, she struggled to imagine any of the children producing children of their own, much less Elizabeth Darcy bearing said children—but her heart did not dictate her decisions. All had agreed that Mrs Darcy was truly with child; Lady Catherine knew her duty. She determined to go.

Anne said she would not mind the solitude; or rather, Lady Catherine said so, and Anne agreed. Meanwhile, according to Georgiana, Mrs Bennet suffered too poor health to make the journey. Lady Catherine sniffed at this. The woman had looked some ten years younger than herself, but it suited her ideas of the world that Fitzwilliam women were made of sterner stuff than tradesmen’s daughters. After four uncomfortable days, she passed by Bakewell to arrive at Pemberley.

The house, she noted with some disapproval, was not nearly as splendid as she remembered in her sister’s day. A folly overlooking the river had been completely destroyed. When she mentioned it, a particularly impertinent servant told her that Mr Darcy had ordered it removed five years ago.

What nonsense!

Even she, however, could not but feel satisfied by the new furniture, and several quite fine paintings, and the prompt deference of the household servants. A footman respectfully ushered her into the salon—the only room worthy for her reception, in Lady Catherine’s judgment, but she was pleased to see that the Darcys themselves apprehended that fact.

All three of them waited for her there, also as it should be. Darcy and Georgiana looked very much as they always did, Georgiana a little taller, nearly Lady Catherine’s height. Mrs Darcy, who rose as quickly as Georgiana, seemed decidedly more elegant than before, and at any rate decidedly in the family way.

“Lady Catherine,” said Darcy, “will you sit down?”


End file.
